Jet: This guy's a major player in the syndicate, operates all around the asteroids.

Spike: You said "bell peppers and beef"...

Jet: His name's Asimov Solensan. Are you listening to me?

Spike: There's no beef in here. So, you wouldn't really call it "bell peppers and beef" now, would you?

Jet: [pause] Yes, I would.

Spike: Well, it's not!

Jet: It is when you're broke, all right?

Spike: What happened to the million woolong reward we got for that last guy?

Jet: The repair bill for the cruiser you wrecked, and the one from the shop you trashed, and the medical bill from the cop you injured... KILLED THE DOUGH!![both pause for a long beat] Now, three days ago, there was a big shootout between his group and a rival syndicate. He killed his own guys then took off like the wind. Word is, he's hiding out with some sweet thing in Tijuana.

Spike: TJ? That place is for small fries.

Jet: Yeah, well, this small fry is worth two-and-a-half million.

Spike: I don't feel like it.

Jet: Speaking of beef, they say in TJ, "the carnitas are out of this world"...

Spike: This is real mystic and all, but uh, do you have anything to eat here?

Cashier: Listen, bro, here's the deal. You can buy anything here on Mars from guns to human lives. And of course, choice information can be purchased as well. So if you wanna know something, let me see some cash. [Spike looks at a pair of long black nunchucks]

Faye: You know the first rule of combat? Shoot them before they shoot you.

[Spike and Jet talking in a casino elevator]

Jet: So Charlie says, "Only hands can wash hands. If you want to receive, you have to give." Something like that. I wish I could remember the exact words. Anyway, I think Charlie's telling us to just do it. Ha... What do you make of it?

Spike: The music box is broken, or is it? It starts to play and a haunting tune fills the air. I awake suddenly from my dream, there is no music box and yet there it is, a tiny one, nestled in my hand and I awake from the dream again as if I were peeling an onion. It’s a dream no matter how far I go; I can never reach reality, trapped in an endless nightmare.

[Wen shoots Spike's right arm, throws his pistol off to an empty area]

Wen: You'd better stay out of it. [Spike turns to him] Little twerp like you sticks his neck out too far, he'll get it cut off. Understand? [Spike then starts groaning in pain]

Spike: Don't give me that crap, kid!

Wen: Sorry, but I'm not a kid.

Spike: Yeah, all kids say that. [Wen pauses for a long beat]

Wen: I know what I look like, but I was alive when this place was an outpost, before the asteroids were even settled. Get the picture?

Jet: When the Gate exploded, a coordinate system was created from the resulting twists in hyperspace—a kind of singularity that drew in vast amounts of energy, enclosing and crystallising them into a single faceted stone, the gem that makes up this ring. The same energy broke Wen's circadian rhythm. His pineal body continually produces a substance like melatonin that inhibits ageing. That's the theory in a nutshell. Get the picture?

Spike: Yeah, as if.

Jet: [sighs] I don't either. Which simply means, there's no way to know for sure until we stick the gem into the kid and find out.

[Spike puts the gem-pointed bullet into the gun and cocks it]

Jet: Anything could happen. It could blow sky high the moment it hits.

Spike: ..Kinda makes it interesting.

Wen: I see... Yes, I can finally die at last... [Spike walks to him] Ah, I feel so heavy... [sighs] But I feel... I finally feel at ease. Do you understand? [Spike pauses] Do you understand? Do you...?

[Wen passes on. Spike picks up his harmonica, blows into it with no sound]

Spike: Yeah, I understand... as if.

[Spike throws the harmonica in the air, slowing uses a finger gun gesture to it]

Muriel: Yeah, it was trashed by those three guys. I think they were called the "Something Brothers".

Spike: You were watching?

Muriel: Uh-huh!

Spike: Then Muriel, why didn't you tell me about it?

Muriel: But I did tell you. I told you just now!

[after escaping the exploding Linus mining satellite]

Spike: Thanks for the help, Victoria Terpsichore. [V.T. is stunned] And give your husband my thanks, too. I figured out who you were because of this. [gives pocket watch to V.T.] Of course, everyone's heard about him... the legendary bounty hunter Terpsichore, and wife. [V.T. gives a moment of silence]

V.T.: I won't be able to give him your thanks for a while. I'm afraid he's doing all his bounty hunting up in Heaven these days.

Spike: I see. [V.T. gives the wad of bills to Spike, he takes back his thousand woolong note] The rest is for your husband. I'm sure he's got a hangover up there. [V.T. gasps in surprise] Treat him to a prairie oyster on me.

Spike: You're tense, I'm calm. You apply excessive force, I control that force through fluid motion. That means relaxing the whole body so that it could react instantly without resistance. You know, without thought. Do you see now? It means becoming like clear water.

Rocco: Water?

Spike: Right. Water can take any form. It drifts without effort one moment then pounds down in a torrent the very next.

Stella: Everyone says bad things about him... And he seems to hang out with some bad people... But Rocco is a good person.

Spike: I might be one of those bad people he hangs out with.

Stella: Maybe. Guess you could be one, but if you are, you’re very different. I can feel these things. Both you and Rocco have something beautiful inside you. It’s hard for most people to see it, but it’s there. I know it is, that’s why I’m sharing my tea with you.

Spike: Something beautiful, huh? I’m afraid that… afraid that I lost that a long time ago.

Stella: I... I never got to see Roco once with my own eyes...Hey, what was Rocco like?

Spike: You know without looking, right? He was a great guy. Exactly the person you thought he was.

Jet: Humans were meant to work and sweat to earn a living. Those that try to get rich quick, or live at the expense of others, all get divine retribution somewhere along the line. That's the lesson. Unfortunately we quickly forget the lessons we've learned, and then we have to learn them all over again.

Faye: "Survival of the fittest" is the law of nature. We deceive or we are deceived. Thus, we flourish or perish. Nothing good ever happened to me when I trusted others. That is the lesson.

[Spike is unable to figure what toxin Jet has in the database]

Faye: So what is it? [hears Ein barking] Ein, give it a rest, would ya?

Spike: Well, this is not an ordinary rat. [Ein keeps barking] Huh? Ein, keep it quiet!

Faye: So what could it be, then?!

Spike: Well, it's a—

Ed: A mystery space creature! [Spike and Faye gasp; she runs upstairs] Spooky! The attack of the horrible alien!

Spike: Well, yeah... That is possible, I suppose. [scoffs] Oh yeah, right. [Ed suddenly jumps down next to Spike]

Ed: Then what is it? It's not in the database, right?

Spike: Well, uh— [Ed points]

Ed: Look! These pairs are abnormal.

Spike: Uhh, you think so?

Ed: Ed has never seen this before. [Spike grumbles] So what else could it be but a horrible alien, huh? What?

Spike: Maybe it's... something like a rat went through a mutation and it evolved... and turned into some kind of unusual creature, and secreted this new form of mysterious poison.

Faye: Oh, that's brilliant. Right out there with Ed's theory that it's a horrible alien! Really pitiful.

Jet: My roommates?! That's why you've been staying here?! You're being stupid! It's been three years since I teamed up with you, but I never knew you had such ridiculous ideas about this thing. What a joke! And I thought you were the one who was lonely!

Spike: I'm glad we cleared that up.

Jet: Good riddance! [walks off, Spike gets into ship] At least I'll be able to keep some food in the place now! [Spike inserts engine key] I never did understand you, right to the very end!

Faye: I am alone. I don't need any comrades, they're not worth it. I end up worrying about things I shouldn't. You know, me being such a prize and all that. All the guys end up fighting over me like dogs. They say humans are social animals, they can't live alone. But you can live pretty well by yourself. I tell ya, instead of feeling alone in a group, it's better to have real solitude all by yourself.

Jet: [shows photo of Faye to the Blue Crow bartender] Are you sure it was this woman?

Bartender: Oh, yeah. It's been six months since I saw a woman in the flesh, and two years since I saw a girl that good-looking. Trust me, I wouldn't make a mistake about that.

Jet: [to himself] Man, I sure wouldn't want to live around here.

Bartender: She sat over there talking to Gren. [Jet sees a lone bar stool] Julia used to sit in that same seat.

Jet: Julia?

Bartender: About two years ago, she wandered in out of the blue. Month later, she disappeared.

Jet: Yeah? What kinda girl was she?

Bartender: She was a real woman.

Vicious: I'm the only one who can keep you alive... And I'm the only one that can kill you...

Vicious: There's nothing to believe in. Nor is there a reason to believe.

[Spike carries up a slowly dying Gren into the cockpit of his ship]

Gren: I get it now. You're the one, aren't you? You're Spike. [sees Spike's different shades of brown in his eyes] Julia was always talking about you. Your eyes are different colors. I remember her saying that. [Gren's eyes are watering] Said you get a strange feeling if you keep looking straight into his eyes.

Gren: Right on the corner bar stool. She'd slip in when I wasn't looking. And she'd ask me to play the same song every time she came in. Strange lilting tune, and then she would smile. Ohh, what a smile. So sad... so beautiful.

[Chessmaster Hex starts laughing uproariously after Ed wins in a game of e-chess]

Hex: This is either an idiot or a genius! I like this fellow...!

[when the boss catches the chess piece thrown by Jet]

Jet: This is a game, all planned out in advance. You Gate guys know exactly what I'm talkin' about. You put a bounty out on some mastermind who may not even exist, which means you don't want the police to know who's really behind this. You suits are using us bounty hunters like pawns, and I don't appreciate it. [the boss pauses for a beat]

Boss: Bounty hunters should look for bounties. I suggest you do that. Maybe you used to work for the ISSP, maybe not. Either way, you'd be wise to drop this line of inquiry. [turns away] Our guest is leaving now. Make sure he's escorted out of the building.

Faye: So, listen, guys. Why don't we all pony up the information we have on this case, and agree to spilt the bounty three ways. Whaddaya say?

Spike: You're kidding, right? You're the one who said to work separately. "Each one gathering the facts and examining them"?

Jet: Occasional rivalry between comrades is healthy. I believe that's the way you put it.

[Spike and Faye crash into Chessmaster Hex's room, aiming him at gunpoint]

Spike: Chessmaster Hex, I take it.

Faye: Don't try anything. Understand?

Hex: You both... [turns to see Spike and Faye] Well, could you just be a little quieter, please?

[Spike and Faye look confused at each other; Jonathan appears between them]

Faye: [takes a closer look at Ein] I've been trying to figure out who it is you remind me of. Now I know. It's that guy with the thin eyebrows. Whitney Hagas Matsumoto. I wonder why I suddenly thought of him out of the blue like that. Do you want a secret about my past? Do you? [Ein yawns hard] Tch...

Doctor Bacchus: "Who am I? My past? My future?" These are questions every human asks at least once in their life.

[Whitney and Faye hide in the woods from a collection agency ship]

Whitney: If we stay here, we'll both get caught. You'd better jump out and run.

Faye: What about you?

Whitney: I'll meet you at the medical clinic. All right?

Faye: But why are you helping me like this?

Witney: Our prince has to protect Sleeping Beauty. That's the way it works.

[Faye has just poured out her life story to Ein in front of the bathroom. Spike flushes the toilet and emerges from the bathroom stall next to Faye]

[Jet holds a cassette-sized package to Faye on her way back from the horse race]

Jet: Pay up. 6300 woolongs.

Faye: What? Where did that come from, huh?

Jet: Special delivery for you.

Faye: Well, I didn't order anything.

Jet: It was COD. [Faye grunts] Top it off, there's no return address on it. I had no choice but to accept it and pay your ta— [Faye slowly reaches the handle and shuts the cockpit door] Hmm? Hey, hold on! [Faye flies her ship away from the Bebop deck] Hey, I want my money or else!

Spike: [turns away from fishing] She's a busy girl, huh?

[Spike and Jet walk through a submerged corridor to a museum underground]

Jet: Tell me again why in the world we're going through all of this?

Spike: It's a lesson to remind you that treasure hunts are always trouble.

Pierrot: [introduces himself] Hello, gentlemen. I journeyed here in order to take your lives.

Jet: [learns Mad Pierrot's past] In the beginning, he escaped from the facility to seek revenge... but now he seems to actually enjoy the act of killing. Apparently his mind is continuing to regress. So he's like a child with superhuman combat capabilities. And really... there's nothing more pure and cruel as a child.

Bob: [tells Jet about Mad Pierrot] This guy's a perfect killing machine. They say that nobody who's seen his face has lived to tell about it. Those few that managed to get away were hunted down relentlessly, and they always turned up dead. They say he appears with a smile, and he leaves with a smile...

Faye: My name's Faye, not "Faye-Faye". You just say it once, okay? [Ed comes to Faye with her computer on her head]

Ed: Faye-Faye! Some weird mail came-came for Bebop-Bebop!

Faye: [sighs] I would've been able to pay it off if I had just a little more time. Would you hold still? [holds Ed's head, reads mail on computer] Hmm... "Hello, boy. You are invited to a wonderful party"? Wait a minute... this is... All right, don't tell Spike about this. It's a secret, okay?

Ed: But why? Faye-Faye, why keep it a secret?

Faye: If we don't, that lunkhead—

Spike: Will run right out to the party? [Faye sees bandaged Spike behind her]

Faye: The more righteous a guy was back in his youth, the more likely he is to fall for some young thing when he gets older.

Spike: Is that right?

Faye: Definitely. Men are extremely predictable.

[Spike sees Faye, Ed and Ein peeking in the main room]

Spike: What're you up to?

Faye: Take a look over there. Jet's got a friend.

Spike: Hm? [sees Meifa and Jet in the main room] Ohh...

Faye: It's a fine romance.

Spike: She's too young for that.

Ed: [starts crawling and singing] Hot-dog bun, not too young!

Faye: Maybe she's got a thing?

Spike: Nah, 'fraid she's too old.

Ed: [crawling back] Oldy, moldy, history, mystery!

Jet: Now, I don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that we brought her out there, but that is how this peculiar case ended. Meifa went back home to Mars, our no-smoking area became a smoking zone again, and life returned to the same daily routine just like before. One thing has changed, though. When I read the news, I never checked the horoscopes anymore.

Spike: Why do you kill off the members of your own group? What's the point of that?

Dr. Londes: I am not forcing anything on anyone. They are merely practicing a faith that they've decided to believe in of their own free will. Tell me, why do you think people believe in God? Because they want to. It's not easy living in such an ugly corrupt world, there is no certainty and nothing to hope for. People are lost so they reach out. Don't you get it? God didn't create humans, no, it's humans who created God.

Dr. Londes: Do you want to know what the greatest and also the worst device that humans ever invented? It's television! Television controls people by bombarding them with information until they lose their sense of reality. Now television itself has become the new religion. Television has created a people who believe instantly in dramatic fantasies who can be controlled by tiny dots of light.

Spike: 'You're like a kid with a toy... You're the one that can't tell fantasy from reality. You're the one who lives in the little dots of light. If you want to dream, just do it by yourself!

Jet: It was all a kid's dream. I guess, all he could do was dream so the dreams turned dark.

Dr. Londes: The souls that God has given us, our spirits. Our spirits, which found a way to swim through the immense network and live in the infinity of space. Is not the human body a mere shell, a form of existence all too small and weak for consciousness with such vast reach and potential?

Faye: It might be good to pair up with another woman. How about it? Wanna partner up?

Vicious: ... And you will shed tears of scarlet.

[Jet walks up the main bridge with Spike sitting down, overlooking the surface of Mars]

Spike: Are you still in pain?

Jet: [beat] Have you heard this story?

Spike: Huh?

Jet: A man injures his leg during a hunt. He's in the middle of the savanna. No means to treat the wound. The leg rots and death approaches. Last minute, he's picked up by an airplane. He looks down and sees a land of pure white below him, glistening in the light. It's the summit of a snow-capped mountain. The mountain is Kilimanjaro. As he gazes down, he feels the life flowing out of him and then, he thinks, "That's where I was headed."

Spike: ..And?

Jet: I hate stories like that. Men only think of their past right before their death, as if they were searching frantically for proof that they were alive.

Jet: When you and I first met, you told me something. You said that you had died once, that you had seen death. Why can't you just let it go? [beat] Forget the past.

Spike: There was a woman. First time I found someone who was truly alive. At least that's what I thought. [long beat] She was the part of me I lost somewhere along the way. The part that was missing, that I'd been longing for.

Spike: There once was a tiger striped cat. This cat died a million deaths, revived and lived a million lives, and he was owned by various people who he didn't really care for. The cat wasn't afraid to die. Then one day the cat became a stray cat, which meant he was free. He met a white female cat, and the two of them spent their days together happily. Well, years passed, and the white cat grew weak and died of old age. The tiger striped cat cried a million times, and then he died too. Except this time, he didn't come back to life.

Bull: Do not fear Death. Death is always at our side. When we show fear, it jumps at us faster than light. But, if we do not show fear, it casts its eye upon us gently and then guides us into infinity...

Spike: Look at these eyes. One of them is a fake, because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I have seen the past in one eye, and the present in the other. I had believed that what I saw was not all of reality...

Faye: Why do you have to go? Where are you going? What are going to do, just throw your life away like it was nothing?

Spike: I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive. I have to do it, Faye.

Back when Cowboy Bebop was in production, we never knew that Japanese anime would have any impact overseas, so we totally didn't see Westerners being exposed to the show. We just made what we enjoyed making, and the fact that it got accepted in the west at all was the most surprising thing. I grew up with US movies so it made me very happy that Americans liked my things, because I was raised on their things, in a way. The moment that made the biggest impact on me here did involve Edward, because Edward was a character I made thinking that no person existed like her in real life. But when I went to Texas, there was someone cosplaying as Ed, and it was like they'd stepped out of the anime. It was completely her if she had been living. How's that for a big impact?